When design system users run into issues designing and developing with the system, they often have a hard time distinguishing between a bug, a missing feature, an intentional design deviation, a new pattern they need to create, or something else. […] | Continue reading
Well this is just a really nice piece of flattery, and a nice breakdown of my design system masterclass I delivered at HATCH Conference in Berlin last year. I truly enjoy teaching masterclasses, running workshops, and working with teams to […] | Continue reading
When you don’t hear from teams using your design system, we’ve learned over the years that it’s typically not a sign of “everything is going great” but “something is probably wrong.” We teach our client teams to be very skeptical […] | Continue reading
I’m happy to announce that I’ll be playing bass as part of the Pittsburgh Plays concert series on December 14th at The Roxian Theatre. From Pittsburgh Play’s website: Pittsburgh Plays is a semi-annual event that offers music lovers of all […] | Continue reading
You should buy Approachable Open Source by Brian Muenzenmeyer. If you written code before, you should buy this book. If you’ve ever spent any time on GitHub, you should buy this book. If you care about the web, you should […] | Continue reading
Now available! We offer private workshops to teach product and design teams to imagine, design, and deliver AI-powered features and products. It’s all backed by Big Medium’s Sentient Design methodology, a practical framework for designing intelligent interfaces that are radically … | Continue reading
I’m extremely excited to be a part of Smashing Conf NYC coming up on October 7-10. I’ll be: If you’re in NYC or able to make it there, I hope you’re able to make it! | Continue reading
I’ve spent pretty much my entire career helping teams design software rather than pictures of software. Development is design. Frontend design. Front-of-front-end code. Front-end workshop environments. Death to the waterfall. The Hot Potato process. Designer/developer collaborati … | Continue reading
Web Components are great for building Design Systems that need to work across multiple frameworks. If you’ve been working in framework-land for quite some time now, you may find some topics confusing at first. Web Components for Framework Developers by […] | Continue reading
I came across this great post by my friend Cameron Moll on LinkedIn. He says: Telling designers they shouldn’t use high-fidelity designs early in the exploration process can be the equivalent of telling an artist they shouldn’t use paint and […] | Continue reading
Source: Popcorn Style – Meetings that make you smile. There’s so much greatness on display here. Popcorn Style is a tool for running standups in a way more efficient and fun way! Here’s why I love it: Respect: we need […] | Continue reading
This by Matt Webb is easily one of the coolest and most creative bits of web design I’ve seen in a long time. It’s a fantastic reminder that there’s still so much room to explore and innovate on the web. […] | Continue reading
Here’s a great recap of Frostapalooza over on CSS Tricks by Ryan Trimble. CSS Tricks for me always was the Rolling Stone magazine of web design, so it’s great to get a concert review in Rolling Stone :). | Continue reading
FIFTEEN YEARS. That’s how long Melissa and I have been married! And holy shit, what a ride. To say our life together has been an adventure is a supreme understatement. We’ve traveled to over 30 countries across 6 continents, climbed […] | Continue reading
One of the best things about roping a bunch of prolific web bloggers into my show is that I get to read their take afterwards. Here’s Chris’s recap of Frostapalooza, written as only Chris could. The way Brad envisioned it, […] | Continue reading
Raw-dogging websites: index.html, styles.css, script.js. No frameworks, no CMSes, no build steps, no nuthin’. Sure, you can call it a static site, but even those tend to be compiled by sophisticated tooling behind the scenes. And also, c’mon, gotta get […] | Continue reading
After over a year of planning, Frostapalooza finally took place on Saturday night at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Pittsburgh. It’s going to take me a really long time to process what transpired and to find the words to properly describe […] | Continue reading
Just over here sobbing while reading Jeremy’s recount of Frostapalooza. In fact, the tentative plans we had to travel to the States in April of 2024 for the total solar eclipse ended up getting scrapped in favour of Brad’s shindig. […] | Continue reading
TL;DR: You can submit your Codepen animations to be considered for display at Frostapalooza! Holy smokes, Frostapalooza is happening next Saturday! We’re about to find out what happens when you give 40 musicians a whole year to plan one night […] | Continue reading
Well, holy shit, I’m 40! How do I feel, you ask? Great! Better than great. Fantastic even. Life’s a wild ride; I’ve had many many many utterly amazing experiences as well as some really truly capital-S Shitty experiences. After it’s […] | Continue reading
This is so great!: The Design Better Podcast is doing a Frostapalooza ticket giveaway! You may have been a part of our recent AMA with Brad Frost, where we learned that he’s hosting a benefit concert this summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania […] | Continue reading
That one weird trick? TALK. What do you do when someone doesn’t see what component they’re looking for in the design system? TALK. What do you do when someone has questions about what a component does, if it meets their […] | Continue reading
HOLY SHIT! Frostapalooza is happening in exactly one month! I’d really, really, really, truly love for you to come to this one-of-a-kind, one-night-only concert fandango happening on August 17th in Pittsburgh. Here’s 40 reasons why you should come: Sounds pretty […] | Continue reading
🎸 I had a fantastic conversation with Guy Segal on the Design Downtime podcast about my love of playing music. We talked about: My musical background The beauty and role of the bass guitar The importance of having hobbies for […] | Continue reading
If you feel like you’re struggling to keep up with the pace of technological change, you’re certainly not alone. We feel this pressure at an individual level, but also at an organizational level. How do digital organizations establish solid, stable […] | Continue reading
Sidebar is taking a break. 😭 Ah man, this makes me so sad. Sidebar has been my number 1 way to keep up to speed with the web, design, and beyond for the last decade. I love it so much. […] | Continue reading
text-decoration-offset is a good use case for em units. Most of the time we favor rems over ems, but in this case we want the text underline offset to proportionally scale with the `font-size` property. Here’s a quick demo: See […] | Continue reading
This is an absolute must-read/watch for any designer or design leader navigating this wild new AI world. Josh Clark is second to none at demystifying this new crop of technologies, demonstrating how to wield AI as a design material, and […] | Continue reading
One day I’ll fulfill my dream of throwing my phone into the ocean*, but for now I’m settling for throwing my phone in my basement. The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt articulates how the potent combination of smartphones and social […] | Continue reading
One of my all-time favorite albums. Fantastic to listen to all of the source material. This video catalogs every borrowed sample from Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, from the soundtrack to Car Wash to the Sugarhill Gang to the […] | Continue reading
The age of average (encore) by Alex Murrell is a wild analysis of how the technology landscape has changed the shape of music. “Media has always shaped music,” the author states, (David Byrne’s How Music Works is a wonderful book […] | Continue reading
The Code & Pixels podcast is A podcast about turning pixels into code. hosted by Adekunle Oduye & Kelly Harrop. I’m excited to dig into this as there aren’t a ton of resources specific to us front-of-the-front-end developers. | Continue reading
What I love, more than anything, is the quality that makes AI such a disaster: If it sees a space, it will fill it—with nonsense, with imagined fact, with links to fake websites. It possesses an absolute willingness to spout […] | Continue reading
You Want border-color: transparent, Not border: none by Dave is a great reminder to not remove borders from components for accessibility reasons, especially to better support high contrast mode. border-color: transparent comes in handy for other use cases as well. […] | Continue reading
Our family was raised on The Weather Channel. So much so that Ian became a meteorologist. So this video that steps through the Local on the 8s over the years gives me all the nostalgic feels. | Continue reading
Every time I read about how is being applied in the world, this graph immediately pops up in my head: As the potential to do harm increases, there must be a corresponding increase in the level of caution, skepticism, and […] | Continue reading
One of my favorite Josh lines that’s really stood the test of time and cuts through a lot of noise in a conversation: Don’t put crap in the design system. Josh Clark What is crap? Crap is rushed work, low-quality […] | Continue reading
I had a fantastic time chatting with a group of design system wizards, Nathan Curtis and Ben Callahan. Geoff Graham did a great job facilitating the conversation, and we covered a lot of ground! | Continue reading
Here’s a pretty damning read about LLMs’ impact on the web. Just how SEO produced an extremely lucrative-yet-icky industry, optimizing web content for AI models seems inevitable. SEO will morph into LLMO: large-language-model optimization, the incipient industry of manipulating A … | Continue reading
Recipes are a critical — and often misunderstood! — layer in the design system ecosystem. First of all, what exactly are recipes? As the name suggests, recipes combine ingredients to create UI experiences that are complex, delicious, nutritious. The design […] | Continue reading
There have been tons of design system roundup sites over the years, but The Component Gallery by Iain Bean is particularly well designed and fun. | Continue reading
Here’s my pal and frequent collaborator TJ Pitre with The Value of Design Tokens in Modern Web Development. TJ’s post is a good overview of design tokens and the various aspects of working with them in a web development workflow. | Continue reading
Ah yes, this old chestnut. It pops up as reliably as daffodils in early spring. My perspective has changed very little over the years. Telling web designers they don't need to worry about code is like telling architects they don't […] | Continue reading
I had a great chat with Chris Strahl on the Design Systems Podcast, and we covered a lot of ground! We sit down with Brad Frost, a leading voice in design systems. Together, we explore the critical intersection between adaptable design systems and brand identities, unveiling the … | Continue reading
I’m not a “[full-stack] developer”, regardless of what my last job title says. I’m not even a front-end developer, thanks to the JavaScript–industrial complex. I’m a front-of-the-front-end developer, but that’s too long. So, I’m a web designer. And I also […] | Continue reading
One video phenomenon that has me enthralled hook, line, and sinker is people hearing music for the first time. Watching vicariously as others experience amazing music for the first time brings me so much joy. Sure, it’s entertaining, but it […] | Continue reading
If you’ve dabbled in design systems then you’re no doubt familiar with Brad Frost and atomic design. He’s laid the foundation for design systems teams around the world. So in this discussion we talk about the types of challenges he […] | Continue reading
Here are some beautiful words from Jeremy. So write! Share! Publish! But you know what? Screw what the world needs. If we’re going to be hardnosed about this, then the world doesn’t need any more books. The world doesn’t need […] | Continue reading